So I managed to bust out another chapter, yay for you guys! I know everyone asks for reviews, but they would be reaaaaalllyyyyy useful, so I could make my future works better for you readers (Including this story :P).

Most importantly of all, enjoy reading! :D

"Soundwave is so meeaaannn to me!" Skywarp tossed and turned on the floor, making a large ruckus in attempt to gather Thundercracker's attention. Doing his best not to be dragged into Skywarp's seemingly endless pile of problems, he continued to start at the data pad in front of him.

Recently, the blue seeker had started to take a liking towards the various customs of the humans. True, some of them weren't very suited towards robots ten times their size, but most parts were transferable. In particular, their perspective on relationships proved to be increasingly useful towards the whole 'Starscream predicament'. Whether these would work on two mechs as warped in personality as Megatron and Starscream, he didn't know. That was yet another problem in the already dire situation. For now, Thundercracker wished to take the whole thing off of his mind, even if that meant conversing with Skywarp for a little while.

"What has he done this time?" Thundercracker said, at least taking a shot at playing interested. Skywarp seemed to be too self-enveloped to notice the lack of emotion, too desperate to get his problems out to someone, which in all honesty could be anything to Soundwave stepping on his foot by accident to torturing him for hours on end. Secretly, Thundercracker preferred the second option.

"Look at all the reports he gave me!" the purple seeker yelled, shoving a data pad roughly in front of Thundercracker to view. Not really having the choice to look at anything else, the blue flier glanced at the text, before giving Skywarp a rather unimpressed look.

"Even I have more than this…" He sighed, turning away in hopes that he would hear no more of Skywarp's tales.

"WHAT?" He yelled. Well, that hope dissipated quickly. "That's illegal, isn't it? There must be some sort of law in place against overworking?" He continued, desperately flailing his arms around to illustrate his outrage. He eventually had to be restrained after almost hitting a particularly valuable computer system off of a shelf.

"It really doesn't take that long if you get down to it…" Thundercracker consoled his sibling, giving a slight pat on the back to encourage the overgrown child. Skywarp gave his trine member a confused look, contemplating what to do next. It was very probable he could get Thundercracker to do a few of these reports for him, should he proceed to beg and cry for the next few minutes. Yet Thundercracker was very rarely in a good mood like he was now, and Skywarp didn't like to disturb these rare occasions. It might not be going too far to even say he was fun to be around at these times.

"If I somehow manage to finish these all by myself…" The teleporter started, shaking slightly from side to side and making his optics appear as innocent as they could, "Then maybe afterwards, could we do something fun together? Pwease?" Thundercracker smiled as he replied.

"I was thinking we could get some pay back on Soundwave, if you'd be open for that?" Skywarp bounced up and down excitedly a few times, before jumping to the floor and scribbling down words the fastest Thundercracker had ever seen him do before. He let a slight smile escape at the sight of the eager flier.

Soundwave strolled around the base, not looking to do anything at this precise moment. His large pedes made a racket out of the steel flooring, echoing through halls for miles on end. A moment ago he'd been receiving repair work from Hook due to a 'lengthy discussion' between him and Megatron. Apparently, despite in his opinion being the only half capable mech in the whole base besides maybe Thundercracker, the tyrant still found lots of room for improvement within him. This time, it'd merely been his voice that had got on the commander's nerves.

"There's nothing wrong with my voice." He said to himself, just to make sure. There was no quiver, no high audio-breaking pitches (Starscream was probably jealous), and it was set at a good volume. Soundwave then decided to stay on the topic of Starscream, as he'd been acting particularly strange in the last couple of weeks. He had shied away from many a confrontation, and taken orders from him without a second thought. Whether he and Megatron would still continue to have their spats, that wasn't clear yet. What was clear, was that Soundwave had started to take a significantly larger amount of Starscream's beatings for him, through no choice of his own. The blue mech would deal with that problem later, right after he-

"Soundwave!" He turned around mid-walk to find a much too excited Skywarp sprinting towards him, later followed by an also dangerously amused Thundercracker. Soundwave liked the seeker a whole lot more when he wasn't happy.

"Need to… Talk to you…" Skywarp puffed, placing servos on hips and swiftly cycling air back into his systems.

"Needs – More exercise." Soundwave replied.

"Shaddap!" Skywarp huffed, now meeting Soundwave's gaze through his visor. The mischief within those optics could not be neglected.

Thundercracker stepped in front of the tired seeker, almost protecting Soundwave from the harm that Skywarp could verbally dish out. Despite his personality being somewhat lacking, Thundercracker didn't possess the same hatred for the third in command as Skywarp seemed to.

"We would like you to discuss something with Megatron."

"Correction – Lord Megatron."

"Correction – You're a suck up" Skywarp hissed in Thundercracker's ear, earning a slight smirk from him. Nonetheless, he continued to keep a straight face.

"Yes fine, Lord Megatron. I believe you'll find everything enclosed here." Thundercracker handed over a small datapad, which Soundwave took from him cautiously and read to himself. The two seekers patiently waited, trying to observe Soundwave's facemask for any signs of a reaction. It was of course, futile in the end. After a short while, he looked up from the datapad, handing it back to Thundercracker.

"Request denied. Reason – Request likely to cause irritated reaction from Lord Megatron. Suggestion – Tell him yourselves." Thundercracker suddenly pushed the datapad back, leaning closer to Soundwave in the menacing sort of way only Starscream was capable of.

"Oh, maybe you're misunderstanding. It wasn't a request, but an order."

"…!?"

"You know, I was talking to this one femme earlier…" Thundercracker grinned, slowly making his was around Soundwave, "She said she recalled one particularly overcharged mech coming on to her one evening." Whilst Soundwave's face didn't show it, his frame twitched slightly at the retelling of this story. In front of him, Skywarp was still too ecstatic for his own good. Or for that matter, the good of anyone else near him, which unfortunately happened to be Soundwave himself right now.

"So I think it'd be in that mech's interest for him to be a good little boy, should he value his dignity. Don't you agree?" Without uttering a word, Soundwave snatched the datapad from the smug seeker and hastened to escape from the situation, the rose colour of his faceplates even showing through his mask a little. Whilst Thundercracker felt a little proud and allowed himself to stand tall over his victory, Skywarp was in hysterics on the floor, having taken a sneaky picture of an embarrassed Soundwave to keep all to himself.

"Well, that's that then." Thundercracker declared, wiping the last giggle off. "Now we'll just have to hope Megatron takes the advice well."

Megatron currently sat in his throne room, even more bored than usual. With a cube of energon resting in one servo, he decided to check on the daily reports for yet another time that day. The Autobots didn't appear to have anything planned as of yet. That would give him more time to sit around doing nothing. Oh yay. Soundwave had reported no lacking shifts, no outbreaks of violence (besides the ones Megatron personally enforced)…

Was everything always this boring? The silver warlord didn't remember ever being stuck with nothing to do. There was always an argument that needed sorting out, a plan that needed arranging, a mech that needed its face bashed in… And yet here he was, supposed to be satisfied, when he felt quite the opposite.

"There must be something…" He murmured to himself, shifting to rest his helm on a gargantuan fist. It was at that moment a small 'pop' from his personal computing system revealed that Starscream had sent his reports in. On time, for once.

"Maybe I am getting through to him after all, ha ha ha…" There was no one to share his joy with. Megatron didn't like sharing anyway.

After opening it, and making a quick scan through, the Decepticon commander found something very odd. Everything seemed to be in order. In all of the thousands of characters laid out before him, none of them made an attempt to insult him in anyway. It was so incredibly boring, Megatron wondered whether he'd gotten Soundwave to write it out for him. One particularly amusing report had 'Megatron is an aft' written down the far left side, using each letter starting the line to spell out the message. He hadn't even noticed until Soundwave had pointed it out (the little tattle tale), at which point he merely laughed rather than getting angry. For all the negative points the seeker had in trying to take over once every fortnight, his antics could still be rather amusing.

Starscream! Maybe that was the problem. For reasons unknown, he'd started stashing himself away within his quarters, only exiting to gather energon or attend talks of war. Maybe he'd formulated another plan to take over the Decepticon force. Megatron rarely sought out to interrupt these, as they rarely ever worked. Well, they never worked. With all the mental strength that Starscream possessed, it seemed to shrink to that of a sparklings when it came to this. Why didn't he just go and join the Autobots if he hated it here so much?

"Lord Megatron." The warlord looked up as he heard his door slip open, to reveal an unusually flustered Soundwave. Megatron raised an optic ridge at this, given that Soundwave generally refrained from showing emotion. The tyrant quickly came to the conclusion that Skywarp must have pranked him in some way. He really needed to set someone to control the seeker, Thundercracker was beginning to become a little lenient with him.

"What do you want?" He growled, preferring boredom to having to sit through a monotone drone for hours on end. Megatron flexed his claws to imply that it was in Soundwave's interests to keep whatever he had to say brief.

"Desire – Discuss leadership methods with Megatron."

"Are you saying that my leadership is not to your liking?" He growled, moments away from getting up and smacking the mech across the jaw.

"…"

"…"

"Desire – Discuss leadership metho-"

"Yes I heard that bit, you imbecile! Get on with it!" Megatron yelled, showing no restraint in letting his vocaliser reach its full volume. Soundwave gulped and took a small pause, pulling out a datapad to refresh his memory. This intrigued his leader, as his third in command never needed to refresh his memory for anything. What did he need the datapad for?

"Current methods – Utilise intimidation for achieving goals." Megatron rolled his eyes.

"I am aware of what I do." He replied sternly. Soundwave took another pause before speaking up again.

"Problem – Motivation lacking within forces."

"Tell me who they are and I'll be sure to pay them a special visit."

"Problem – Likely figure being 85.3% of base. Too large to visit individually."

"Where on Cybertron are you getting these figures?" Megatron roared, clanging two clenched servos so loudly on the desk that large dents appeared on the metallic surface. Soundwave stood unfazed, if anything becoming disinterested from having to wait in order to speak.

"Source – Google."

"Oh." Megatron stared flatly, ignoring Soundwave for the moment. That couldn't possibly be right… Could it? He was a good leader. He knew he was. His battle plans were superb if he did say so himself, he always got what he wanted from his troops. What did it matter how he did it? And besides, he only occasionally hit them, to keep them in line and on their toes. Besides, if they wanted a friend, they could confide in themselves for such useless things. Megatron certainly had no time for them, and neither did war. So what was the problem?

"Request to continue, my liege." Megatron was brought out of his train of thought to return to reality. He'd much rather ponder his own weaknesses than listen to Soundwave's complaints. But maybe, just maybe, he'd have a reasonable solution.

"Alright. Let's hear this brilliant plan of yours." Groaned Megatron, not really going into it with an open mind.

"Suggestion – try…" Soundwave stopped, looking at Megatron to check whether he was in punching range. At the moment, it seemed though he was not. That was likely to change soon.

"Try to create a more… friendly atmosphere." Soundwave cringed. The hit was going to come any minute. Damn those two seekers and their ridiculous plan. So what if it helped win the war… All Soundwave was concerned about was keeping his stable position of third in command, and certainly not becoming the personal punch bag for a psychopathic leader.

"Okay."

"What?" The monotoned mech left his usual speaking patterns out of pure shock, unable to tell what kind of trick Megatron was playing on him.

"I'm agreeing to your idea. That's what you wanted, isn't it?" Megatron growled, annoyed at Soundwave's response when he was trying to be extremely optimistic for once. When this plan had crashed and burned, he could rest assured that it was merely his allies that had issues, and not the tyrant himself. Yes, and then he'd ensure Soundwave didn't try something like this again. Even better, another excuse to hit Soundwave.

"S-Suggestion – Attempt method with one mech as an experiment?" Soundwave added in, though uncertain of whether he was permitted to talk.

"Yes, yes. Very good, Soundwave." But who was he going to pick? Preferably someone higher up within the ranks, that would ensure that the effects would remain prominent for a while (Should anything good come of this – not likely). Not Soundwave of course, listening to that voice for days on end would just be awful. Skywarp? No way, too hyper active. Maybe Thundercracker, but… He could be very much like Soundwave at times, and his colour was much too bright for Megatron's optics. Starscream? No… Wait. Maybe that could work. The seeker had been acting awfully strange lately, so it'd be a good chance to see what he was getting up to behind the commander's back. And if things went wrong, he could always choke any disobedience out of him to revert back to their original status. Yes, Starscream would do perfectly.

"Lord Megatron – Requesting permission to leave."

"Do you need me to carry you through the door or something?" Megatron frowned.

"Sarcasm – Not friendly. Suggesti-"

"Get out, Soundwave!" Soundwave obediently left, and made a mental note to get back at the two seekers for their idiocy later. Megatron, meanwhile, smiled on his throne, clasping his hands together and grinning evilly.

"Perhaps it won't be so boring after all… Mwa ha ha."

Dun dun DUN! What plans does Megatron have for Starscream? You'll have to tune in next time to get the full scoop!